English Heritage, the esteemed guardian body of our ancient monuments, has declared that Hadrian’s Wall, the most famous relic of the Roman occupation, is a gay icon and is “linked to England’s queer history”. So says the Mail.
The reason is that the Emperor Hadrian (117–38) enjoyed “several gay relationships”. Like most such tortuous woke revelations, Hadrian’s tastes are old news. It’s undoubtedly true that Hadrian bridged the joyless chasm of his loveless and childless marriage to his Empress Sabina in a disastrous infatuation with a youth called Antinous. Here’s what the only ancient biography of Hadrian says, written about two centuries later, referring to Hadrian’s “passion for males and the adulteries with married women to which he is said to have been addicted”.
But the big story was that:
During a journey on the Nile he lost Antinous, his favourite, and for this youth he wept like a woman. Concerning this incident there are varying rumours; for some claim that he had devoted himself to death for Hadrian, and others – what both his beauty and Hadrian’s sensuality suggest. But however this may be, the Greeks deified him at Hadrian’s request, and declared that oracles were given through his agency, but these, it is commonly asserted, were composed by Hadrian himself.
The Life of Hadrian, Part 1, ch.14
There’s also an account written a century after the event by a Roman senator called Cassius Dio. This is what he said:
Antinous was from Bithynium, a city of Bithynia, which we also call Claudiopolis; he had been a favourite of the Emperor and had died in Egypt, either by falling into the Nile, as Hadrian writes, or, as the truth is, by being offered in sacrifice. For Hadrian, as I have stated, was always very curious and employed divinations and incantations of all kinds. Accordingly, he honoured Antinous, either because of his love for him or because the youth had voluntarily undertaken to die (it being necessary that a life should be surrendered freely for the accomplishment of the ends Hadrian had in view), by building a city on the spot where he had suffered this fate and naming it after him; and he also set up statues, or rather sacred images, of him, practically all over the world. Finally, he declared that he had seen a star which he took to be that of Antinous, and gladly lent an ear to the fictitious tales woven by his associates to the effect that the star had really come into being from the spirit of Antinous and had then appeared for the first time. On this account, then, he became the object of some ridicule.
Roman History, Cassius Dio, Book 69, ch.11
And the obvious question here is, so what? It was commonplace for elite Roman men, despite being married and having families, to indulge themselves with relationships involving boys and youths though it’s quite clear both these sources are a little ambivalent about what Hadrian was up to. Hadrian’s predecessor Trajan (98–117) was reputed to have been “devoted to boys and wine… in his relations with boys he harmed no one”, so said Cassius Dio.
More to the point, what has all this got to do with Hadrian’s Wall? And the answer of course is nothing at all. In 119, Hadrian came to Britain and there, according to the biographer, “he was the first to construct a wall, 80 [Roman] miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans”. For a start, that was long before Antinous and while Hadrian might have had a hand in the Wall’s complex design, the project was actually executed by his governor of Britain, Aulus Platorius Nepos. Cassius Dio doesn’t even bother to mention the Wall.
In the wacky world of woke, the potential for contradictions and confusion seems to be unlimited. According to the Mail, “Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said it was ‘important that this hidden history is revealed’”. So far as I know, Hadrian’s private life has never been hidden, whatever it really amounted to.
Not only that, but Hadrian of course (as a self-respecting Roman), owned slaves. A gay/queer hero with his queer wall who merrily indulged in the servitude of other human beings? He even gave them away, most famously when he saw a man at the baths who was rubbing himself down against the bath wall because he had no slaves of his own. Hadrian generously handed over some slaves for free to this deprived Roman.
To be fair Hadrian did prohibit masters from killing their slaves and banned anyone from selling a slave to a gladiator trainer unless they could come up with a good reason for doing so. Enlightenment of a sort, but on another occasion, “when he saw one of his slaves walk away from his presence between two senators, he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and say to him: ‘Do not walk between those whose slave you may some day be’”.
Now I’ve ‘revealed’ another part of Hadrian’s ‘hidden history’, shouldn’t any images of Hadrian displayed on or near the Wall be torn down and thrown in the River Tyne? Indeed, the famous bust of Hadrian displayed in the British Museum was found in the Thames where it had been hurled at some point during the Roman period. Perhaps it should be thrown back?
If English Heritage really wanted a piece of queer imagery from the northern frontier they could have looked at the Roman fort of Arbeia at South Shields. In the early third century AD, at the supply base there (it wasn’t on Hadrian’s Wall), a young man called Victor was buried and this text placed on his tombstone:
To the spirits of the departed (and) of Victor, a Moorish tribesman, aged 20, freedman of Numerianus, trooper of Ala I Asturum, who most devotedly conducted him to the tomb.
The text seems quite neutral. However, the tombstone is unusually elaborate and must have been a costly commission. Victor is shown in a long-sleeved tunic and robe lounging on a couch. Below him a boy stands holding a cup up towards the deceased. Whether the men shared a sexual relationship can only be conjecture but the unusually affectionate nature of the piece suggests that the possibility is a real one. The wearing of a long-sleeved tunic (chiridota tunica) by a man was explicitly associated with a preference for male partners. It must mean that by then Victor’s relationship with Numerianus was conducted openly. On the other hand, Victor was his former slave and freedman and in this context the relationship may have been more acceptable, especially if Numerianus was somewhat older, though I’m not sure if that makes it especially edifying.
However, nearby is the tombstone of Regina (‘Queen’), a tribeswoman of the Catuvellauni (Hertfordshire) in Britain from about the same date. Regina’s name is Latin and was probably the name given to her when she was enslaved, quite possibly by Britons. Regina was bought by a man of Syrian origin called Barates, who came from Palmyra. Evidently, he had taken, or took, a liking to her because he freed her and married her probably in her mid-teens or early twenties. Regina and Barates lived in the civilian settlement outside the frontier supply base fort at South Shields at the mouth of the Tyne, some way east of the end of Hadrian’s Wall. Barates was almost certainly a soldier based at the fort or on the northern frontier nearby. He was evidently greatly distressed because he commissioned an extravagant tombstone for his “freedwoman and wife” who had died aged thirty.
Victor and Regina’s stories show that it takes all sorts as it has always done, and that their lives (as Hadrian’s) were no more hidden in antiquity than they are now.
However, the Mail adds ominously: “English Heritage also listed Chiswick House, Walmer Castle, Farleigh Hungerford Castle, Eltham Palace and Rievaulx Abbey as sites linked to England’s ‘queer history’.”
Cue: sinking feeling.
Guy de la Bédoyère is the author of Gladius. Living, Fighting and Dying in the Roman Army (Little, Brown 2020) and Hadrian’s Wall. History and Guide (Amberley 2010).
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